The words hit me like a physical shove, and heat floods straight through my body so fast my knees almost lock. Owen’s expression shifts immediately, like he regrets saying it out loud, but honestly? The damage is already done. My entire nervous system is now fully focused on the image he just dropped directly into my brain.
“You can’t just say things like that,” I whisper.
His eyes drag over my face slowly. “Apparently, I can.”
The tension between us snaps taut. Neither of us moves. Neither of us breathes normally.
This whole day has felt wrong because we’ve both been pretending not to want each other, even though the truth has been sitting between us the entire time.
“You really thought I regretted you?” I ask softly.
Something vulnerable flickers across his face again. Barely there. But enough.
“You left before I woke up,” he says quietly. “I figured that was a pretty solid clue.”
Well, when he says it that way, I sound awful. Guilt twists low in my stomach immediately. Not because of what he did to me. Never because of that.
Because of him.
Because that night, for the first time in longer than I care to examine too closely, someone touched me like my pleasure mattered. Like I mattered. And my response was to flee the scene.
“Owen,” I say softly.
I step toward him before I can rethink it. His entire body stills. My hand settles against the center of his chest carefully, right over the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath the damp fabric of his training shirt.
The second I touch him, his eyes close briefly. The reaction hits me low and hard.
“You make me crazy, too,” I admit quietly.
His eyes open immediately. I press my lips to his. Owen kisses me back instantly. The force of it drives me backward a step until the edge of the desk bumps against my thighs. His hands land on my waist hard enough to make me gasp into his mouth, and the sound he makes in response is deep and rough and absolutely catastrophic to my ability to think.
This is a terrible idea.
I only kiss him harder.
Apparently, my survival instincts died somewhere around the first orgasm.
Owen’s mouth moves against mine like he’s been holding himself back all day and finally snapped. There’s still restraint there somehow, which honestly might be the hottest part. Even now, with his grip tightening on my hips and his breathing turning rough against my mouth, he feels controlled in the places that matter.
God, I’m in trouble.
My fingers slide into the damp hair at the nape of his neck, and his entire body reacts immediately. His grip flexes hard enough to pull me flush against him while a low sound catches in his throat.
That reaction sends me sailing. So I do it again deliberately this time, nails lightly scraping his scalp.
“O-kay,” I whisper against his mouth when his eyes close briefly. “That’s useful information.”
His forehead drops against mine while he exhales shakily. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“You make it very easy.”
The corner of his mouth twitches for half a second before he kisses me again, deeper this time. I can feel how badly he wants me now. The hard length of his cock presses against my stomachthrough our clothes, and heat curls low between my thighs immediately in response.
“Owen,” I say.
His hands slide slowly up my sides like he’s relearning me through touch. The movement is so gentle, and that tenderness hits me harder than aggression would have.
That’s the real problem with him. It’s the fact that underneath all of his on-ice bluster, he’s softer than he’d ever let on.
